He Loved a Muggle
by Invader Tar
Summary: The story of Tom Riddle's last stay at the orphanage, and the girl he almost...loved. OneShot, R & R please.


Disclaimer: I do not own nor claim the Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling. I do, however, claim being awesome.

A/N: The following story was inspired by the phrase, "Welcome home, duche bag". No joke.

**OH HOW THE MONTHS PASSED**

Tom Riddle stood in front of the big, stone, gray building, popping the collar of his longish black coat against the intense wind. He sighed, looking around him at the many commoners rushing about the street, ducking into any building which would offer them shelter against the unseasonable storm. Yet, he still stood there, contemplating going in. At last, he convinced himself to go inside with the solitary thought that this would be his last mandatory summer stay inside the orphanage. He walked up the grand steps and into the building.

He had been right. The dim building offered him no warmth, be it temperature-wise or the indescribable warmth one often feels from a place that he has spent such a huge part of his childhood at. This place, however, held absolutely no aura for Tom Riddle, be it positive or negative. Instead, he viewed the entire experience as a test of endurance, as yet another way to prove he was strong. As he walked down the hall, he noticed all the figures of small children dodge out of his way. He noticed one figure in particular, someone completely covered in shadow. It didn't matter, he would have been able to pick out her silhouette amongst a million others. He acted as if he had not noticed her and walked down the hall to his personal prison cell.

As he walked into the room, he took off his coat and emerald scarf, along with the matching sweater. It wasn't long before he heard her knock on his door, still, it took longer than he had expected. He opened the door and returned to unpacking, still not looking at her face. She stepped into the middle of the room, helping him unpack. He unpacked the clothes and she hung them, all this communicated without a word being exchanged between the two. Finally, they were done.

"Why, Tom Riddle," she said, sitting on his bed, "I do believe that you get more handsome every time I see you." As he sat beside her, he finally looked up into her face. She looked exactly the same, yet completely different. Her eyes were the same shade of icy blue, so light, that it took the viewer a second or two before realizing she had irises at all. Her dark, curly hair wrapped itself around her shoulders, thrown into extreme contrast against her porcelain-like skin. She was beautiful. It was not a beauty one was used to finding in a woman, but a cruel and startling beauty which marked Satan as it's true maker in the subconscious mind of the beholder. It was odd, and still completely predictable that these two souls, having in common only their cold presence and chilling beauty, would find some comfort in each other.

"Desdemona," he said, brushing a curl of her hair behind her ear, "you grow stranger every time I see you." She laughed at his sincerity, and his mouth pulled up in a less-than-half-hearted-smile. He thoroughly enjoyed the feeling which spread throughout him when he heard her laugh. She was wearing an emerald shirt and black jeans, he knew she must have been thinking it as appropriate for the special occasion.

"So in the corridor," she said, standing up and walking to his trunk, "were you ignoring me or putting on a show for the little children who fear the mirrored image of your very shadow?" She seemed amused by the idea that anyone could ignore her. After all, those who looked away from her only did so automatically, due to the intimidation they felt because of her supernatural beauty which so resembled his own.

"If I were ignoring you," he said, leaning back against the wall, "you would know." He closed his eyes. It had been a long day.

"And why is that?" Her voice came, still from beside his trunk, "would you turn me into a rabbit, Mr. Magician?" This caused his brilliant eyes to snap open, his face manipulated into a smile which would have given any ordinary human chills, yet, which caused the grin on Desdemona's face to widen.

"No, something more fitting," he said, tilting his head to give her the same hellish grin, "like a cockroach."

**OH HOW THE WEEKS PASSED**

"Demi?" Tom Riddle said, his voice rough from disuse. Many of the children in the run-down rec room looked up, having heard Tom Riddle speak for the very first time. It was obvious that they had all been waiting for something similar to happen. They had isolated Desdemona and Tom in such a way that had the volume of the television been higher than the lowest level, or had anyone in the room been talking, no one would have heard them. The tension of their presence polluted the air, drugging the children into acting like humans for once, rather than forgotten children of God, taking out their infinite frustration on each other.

"Hmm?" She replied, not looking up from the rubik's cube she had solved over a dozen times that night. She would hand the cube to a little girl that all the other children isolated because she refused to speak, and solved it once the girl had properly contorted the colors. The little girl lay asleep, a few feet from Desdemona's legs. It was obvious that the little girl admired and loved her...but not enough to cross the invisible barrier set out between them by nature. That was Demi's job.

"If you met your mother," he asked, easily crossing the barrier, having a similar stronger one himself, and plopping down at her feet, "what would you ask her?" He watched her hands move, she was still refusing to look up at him.

"So, Tom Marvolo Riddle, I suppose you're deciding to speak to me again?" Although her voice was completely flat, the undertone of resentment stung him more than her shouting would have.

"My mind isn't fully made up yet," he said, sounding half amused, half irritated. He stretched across the ground, resting his head on his arms and staring up at her. He knew she would answer him, she always did. All humans were predictable when it came to their attitude towards him.

"I see," she paused to toss the fully matching rubik's cube to the side, "I guess I would ask her if staring at me kind of felt like staring at her overgrown appendix." This is why, despite all her flaws and stubbornness, he kept her around. She still refused to look him in the eye.

**OH HOW THE DAYS PASSED**

"I'm sick of this place already," he said, taking a long drag on his cigarette. She wrapped her worn-out sweater tighter around herself.

"Be glad you only have one night left," she sighed, looking straight ahead though they had been walking for hours, "I never get to leave." He positioned himself in front of her and stopped, glaring at her icy-blue eyes which always seemed to look everywhere but at him.

"Come with me," he said simply, taking another long drag on his nearly burnt-out cigarette. He looked up into the cloudy sky, giving up on catching her off-guard so that she would look at him. He had no idea why it bothered him so much.

"Right," she snorted, "I'm a commoner, no magical power whatsoever. I am not special." She seemed a bit resentful as she said this, but Tom brushed that fact aside to be examined at a later time.

"With the fear I install in their hearts, it wouldn't matter," he threw his cigarette in a nearby puddle and tucked his hands into his jacket, "they would be driven away by the mere memory of me." He gave a bitter chuckle and started walking again, pausing briefly every few steps for her to catch up to his lengthy strides. At that moment, what he wanted to say more than anything else was, 'everyone would love you because I do', but like anything else that would make him seem life-sized, he kept it inside.

**OH HOW THE HOURS PASSED**

That night, he lay awake, the same thoughts running through his mind. He finally seemed to realize in his conscious mind that he loved her, or felt towards her what _he_ thought was love. He admitted that her avoiding his eyes for weeks now irritated him to an amazing extent. He was fully aware that at times, when he paid attention to how she carefully avoided his gaze, he went mad. He would want to break something, anything—even her. He felt like destroying something beautiful. He couldn't figure out why he loved her.

Emotions were like algebraic equations, there was always an inverse to help you figure out the equation. In this case, the inverse was trying to find the psychological thing which subconsciously attracted him to her. He settled on it being her startling beauty, after all, any man would want her. Though he refused to admit it and would for years afterwards, it was the way she treated him that attracted him most. She seemed almost oblivious to the gift of his beauty which had gradually shifted into a curse, repelling everyone. She was accepting of his arrogance, and either ignoring or welcoming of the psychotic being which they were both sure lived within him. The only thing true that he admitted was that he "loved" her, and there was nothing he could do to feel differently. He got up and went to her bedroom. She was awake, but stared at her hands rather than him when she asked why he was there.

**OH HOW THE MINUTES PASSED**

A little while later, he knelt beside her bed, covering his face with his arms. He took sharp intakes of breath between tear-filled heaves. He felt sick to his stomach. He did not like this new emotion, but that didn't matter much, it loved him. It had taken a hold of him, squeezing so tight as to squeeze the life out of him...but, unfortunately, he had survived. His hands shook, the bedspread beneath his face completely wet with his tears. He had lost control of his legs a few minutes before and collapsed, holding on to the bed. For once, he was too weak. This was worse than any physical pain he had ever felt. In fact, he was fully conscious of his soul crashing beneath the weight of all the he felt.

This was not the human side of him, as no one is sure that exists. This was the side that simply felt as opposed to the side he would show hereafter which felt nothing. He took another small breath, it felt as if his lungs were collapsing. The walls seemed to close in on him, forever trapping him within this scene, the one his heard refused to recover from, the one which would cause him to desire to be inhuman more than anything, so that he would never have to feel this kind of pain again. Only a small percentage of us ever undergo such degree of pain, for which anyone with a small taste of the pain recommends that you thank whichever deity you pray to. He took her cold hand in his and propped himself higher onto the bed so that he could stare into her eyes.

"Don't you see? I had to do this," He sobbed, staring into her eyes which finally looked at him, though completely unseeing of the beautiful wreck, "I love you, Desdemona. If I love you, you have the ability to hurt me...and I can't let you do that. I am Lord Voldemort."

**OH HOW THEIR LIVES PASSED**


End file.
